This story is part of Focal Point iPhone 2022, CNET’s collection of news, tips and advice about Apple’s hottest product.
Apple unveiled its new iPhones at its “Far Out” event this Wednesday, but reserved its biggest changes for its iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max models. The new standout feature: The iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max don’t have a notch. In its place is a small, pill-shaped display cutout that houses a revamped TrueDepth camera unit for Face ID, selfies, and video calling. Instead of ignoring the cutout, Apple created a system of motion alerts and notifications called Dynamic Island that uses the black space around it. Weird name aside, the feature in person is attractive and looks great.
Dynamic Island, which isn’t present on the iPhone 14 or iPhone 14 Plus, is just one of the ways Apple widened the gap between the Pro and non-Pro iPhone models. Another way is the price. The iPhone 14 Pro starts at $999, which is $200 more than the iPhone 14 which starts at $799. The 14 Pro costs the same price as previous Pro models and the iPhone X that debuted in 2018. But some people will be put off by the price of the 14 Pro or the 14 Pro Max, which starts at $1,099.
iPhone 14 display: Goodbye notch, hello Dynamic Island
From the back, the iPhone 14 Pro doesn’t look much different from last year’s flagship, the iPhone 13 Pro. But from the front, the 14 Pro’s display cutout looks contemporary and fresh compared to the 13 Pro’s notch. The first thing I noticed upon picking up an iPhone 14 Pro was that the infamous notch was gone. The pill-shaped display cutout is much smaller in comparison.
Apple’s Dynamic Island interface also works very well. For example, I played a song on Apple Music. When I exited the app, there was a small waveform on one side of the cutout and a minute-long thumbnail with album artwork on the other. When I played Dynamic Island, I was immediately taken to the song in the Apple Music app.
Of course, the cutout is only part of the Super Retina XDR display that can now reach 2,000 nits of brightness for better visibility in bright light. By contrast, the iPhone 13 Pro reaches 1,200 nits of brightness. The 14 Pro uses LTPO (Low Temperature Polycrystalline Oxide) technology to reduce the refresh rate to 1Hz, which could help save battery drain and enable always-on display. The LTPO screen of the 13 Pro reaches 10 Hz.
A16 Bionic from iPhone 14 Pro: the new chip for 2022
Apple A16 Bionic chip.
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There’s also the new A16 Bionic chip that’s only reserved for the Pro models this year. The iPhone 14 and 14 Plus use the same version of the A15 Bionic chip found in last year’s iPhone 13 Pro. The A16 chip is more efficient and uses 20% less power than the A15 chip.
The A16 chip includes 16 billion transistors in a 4 nanometer process compared to 15 billion transistors in 5 nanometers in the A15. Aside from the transistor count added to the new manufacturing process, the jump in computing power might not be as significant from the 13 Pro to the 14 Pro as it was from the 12 Pro to the 13 Pro. It’s also unknown how much RAM the iPhone 14 Pro will have, as Apple historically doesn’t share how much RAM is in the iPhone.
The GPU also sees an upgrade, with 50% more memory bandwidth. The display engine on the A16 Bionic chip helps power the LTPO display as well as the Dynamic Island. Apple says the neural engine in the A16 Bionic is capable of 17 trillion operations per second, which are needed for computational photography.
In my few minutes with the iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max, system animations looked smooth and iOS 16 animated.
iPhone 14 Pro camera: Pixel binning comes to iPhone
The iPhone 14 Pro will have a 48-megapixel camera. The quad-pixel sensor uses pixel binning to group four pixels together and make them act as one large pixel for better light capture. Android phones, including the Galaxy S22 Ultra, use a similar technique with high-megapixel camera sensors. The phone’s Pro Raw mode lets you capture photos at its full 48-megapixel resolution.
Apple developed a new computational image processing method to take advantage of the new pixel pattern for better color accuracy and detail. It’s called the Photonic Engine, which improves the iPhone Pro’s camera performance twice in low light compared to the iPhone 13 Pro. The 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max can also use the 48-megapixel sensor to “pierce” a photo, emulating a 2x zoom with the sensor’s average 12 megapixels.
Photonic engine processing also benefits the ultra-large camera with a three-times improvement in low-light photos and two-times improvement in telephoto and front-facing photos.
In video capture, Apple said the iPhone 14 Pro will come with Pro Video and Cinema modes that can now record at 4K and 24 frames per second. Both Pro models also have Apple’s new video image stabilization called Action Mode. Basically, when you’re shooting a video, in the top left corner of the camera preview is the action mode icon. When I tried it, it seemed to do a good job of smoothing out handshakes. I noticed that if I had the video resolution set to 4K, the action mode reduced it to 2.8K.
The iPhone 14 Pro camera tap and the new TrueDepth camera screen cutout.
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iPhone 14 Pro vs iPhone 13 Pro
With the launch of the iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max, Apple also discontinued the iPhone 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max. Even though Apple isn’t selling last year’s Pro models, that doesn’t mean it’s gone entirely. Various retailers and third-party carriers may continue to sell the old Pro. But should you get an iPhone 13 Pro or an iPhone 14 Pro?
In terms of features, hardware and lifespan, the iPhone 14 Pro seems to eclipse the iPhone 13 Pro in almost every way. However, sometimes there isn’t a drastic difference between the two phones. If you have an iPhone 13 Pro, there appears to be no need to upgrade to the iPhone 14 Pro. But if you’ve got an older iPhone and you’re trying to choose between the two, you’ll probably be pushed towards the new 14 Pro unless you’ve got an absolute discount on the 13 Pro.
iPhone 14 Pro: Battery life, price and other features
Apple said the iPhone 14 Pro will have all-day battery life, longer than previous models. It will also include newly introduced features found on the base iPhone 14, such as Emergency SOS via satellite, a satellite-based system for communication in cellular and Wi-Fi dead zones, and Crash Detection, which lets the device know if I’ve been in a car accident.
The upcoming iOS 16 will be the operating system that will power Apple’s iPhone 14 line out of the box.
The iPhone 14 Pro will start at $999 (£1,099, AU$1,749). The 14 Pro Max will start at $1,099 (£1,199, AU$1,899). Apple’s two premium phones are more expensive than the base iPhone 14 and 14 Plus devices, which start at $799 (£849, AU$1,399) and $899 (£949, AU$1,579) respectively.
Pre-orders start on September 9, and the phones will launch on September 16.
Apple event: full coverage
iPhone 14 vs iPhone 14 Plus vs iPhone 14 Pro vs iPhone 14 Pro Max
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